


To think of what I have lost (To hope for what might be found)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 5 Times, Coda, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Mild Angst, Mostly Fluff, Post-Canon Fix-It, also yes this is another steve comes home fic, h50 episode 10.22, i think there's some pining but it's resolved in just over 1100 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26406565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “Pretty sure Grover was moping at the office today,” Danny claims, early in the second week. Steve asks him to describe what a mopey Grover looks like exactly, and Danny paints him a picture straight out of Sesame Street.Or: Five (more) times Danny tells Steve someone misses him.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 16
Kudos: 278





	To think of what I have lost (To hope for what might be found)

**Author's Note:**

> In 10.22, Steve gets on the plane and gets a text from Danny that says _I miss you already_ and then leaves the island, and I think that’s all you need to know to understand this fic.
> 
> The title is adapted from these lines from Peter Mulvey’s song _Out Here_ : “It’s my privilege to lie awake at night / And think of what I have lost, and hope for what might be found.”

“You know,” Danny says, the first time Steve calls him, which is the morning after the plane that took Steve away from Honolulu spits him out in a different part of the world. “Junior really misses you. I offered to cook, and he said we could just crack open some MREs. Looking for a little nostalgia from when you were in charge of the kitchen, I bet.”

“Are you sure it’s not your cooking that made him long for military grub?” Steve asks. It causes Danny to grumble at him over the phone. Threats to hang up are uttered repeatedly, but not followed through upon until an hour later, which in turn makes Steve grin at total strangers passing him by in the hotel lobby.

*

“Pretty sure Grover was moping at the office today,” Danny claims, early in the second week. Steve asks him to describe what a mopey Grover looks like exactly, and Danny paints him a picture straight out of Sesame Street. The guy handing Steve his cup of coffee over the counter startles when Steve suddenly barks a laugh, and Steve has to juggle apologizing, not spilling his drink and Danny telling him he laughs like a donkey all at once.

*

The third time, Steve has just waved Cath goodbye at an airport somewhere in some place because her leave is up and several CIA projects are apparently falling apart without her guidance. He’s on his way back into the giant, crowded entrance hall when his phone rings. He answers while he’s making a sharp U-turn to retrace his steps to where he saw some open seats by a window, because by now he knows this will probably take a while.

He’s watched five planes take off into the air by the time Danny casually drops, “Oh, and Tani told me today that she can’t find anyone who’ll go paddle boarding with her and spend half the time waxing poetic about me.”

“I don’t wax poetic,” Steve says. “Nothing I’ve said to her ever even rhymed.”

“You are not convincing,” Danny throws back. “I remain unconvinced.”

Steve uses the age old debating trick of declaring himself the winner anyway and changes the topic.

*

The real hits start coming in week four. It’s nearing a month since he’s been on Hawaiian soil; a month since he last saw Danny through anything other than a screen. A month since the last time he touched Danny or smelled Danny or was insulted by Danny in person.

But then Danny says, “Charlie asked me today if you were ever coming back.”

And that-

Well. Steve blows out a sharp breath through his nose, gut-punched and betrayed. “That’s not playing fair.”

“Tell me about it,” Danny says, and he doesn’t even sound like he’s joking. He sounds tired.

Their call ends abruptly after that when Steve needs to run to change trains. He makes it, but he’s left with a sharper awareness of the unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach and with a distaste for even looking at his phone.

*

They still call, after that, but their conversations almost glaringly avoid mentioning Steve’s absence for a little bit. “Eddie misses you,” Danny says eventually, cautiously. “It’s been five weeks and he’s still camping out by the door every night.” 

That’s almost the same kind of emotional hit as the thing about Charlie, but Danny’s tone is different now. Lighter, like he’s trying to wrench it back into just poking fun. It doesn’t quite work, but the effort turns it into something that’s not an accusation so much as a plea, maybe, thinly papered over with good humor and nice words.

Steve closes his eyes, presses the phone a little closer to his ear and leans his temple against the cab window. “Danny.”

“Yes?”

“Why do you keep finding other people and dogs that miss me, instead of just admitting that you do?”

A silence. Danny huffs, and without seeing him Steve can’t tell if he’s amused or annoyed. “I already told you so over text and it didn’t work.”

Steve still has that message on his phone. He may have also screenshotted it so it wouldn’t get lost in the depths of their text chain. “How was it supposed to work?”

“You tell me.”

The cab Steve is in slows down, he opens his eyes, and his gut doesn’t tell him he’s looking for himself in the wrong place for the first time since he set out on this journey. “Alright,” he says to Danny, and hangs up. His phone immediately starts ringing, but he puts it on silent and lets it. 

He throws some bills at the driver. He thanks her. He grabs his bag, just the one, and gets out. Time is moving at exactly the rate it always does, and for his own part he’s putting on considerably more speed than usual, but they both feel interminably slow.

But still: eventually, inevitably, he makes it to an unlocked door and then across the threshold into a living room. Eddie is there and wags his tail, and the tv is there and plays a nature documentary on low volume, and Danny is there and eclipses everything. Danny freezes in the middle of pacing a moat around the lounge chair, phone still pressed to his ear and that expression on his face that he gets when Steve does something stupid and Danny really struggles to decide if he’s more angry or worried.

Steve wouldn’t know how to be either. He spent all this time communicating from a distance when he could have been right here. He thinks he could cry.

He doesn’t, and neither does Danny, who follows Eddie’s exuberant advance more carefully. He slips his phone into his pocket. He takes Steve in from head to toe. “You’re back,” he says, when he’s right in front of Steve, right next to Eddie.

When Steve breathes in, his chest is filled with home. “I am.”

Danny twitches, like he wants to move in but doesn’t, can’t. Might not know how. “Is this for Eddie?”

“Sure,” Steve says, and bends all the way down to grab Eddie’s ears and kiss him on the nose, and then drops his bag and stands back up to grab Danny’s face and kiss him square on the mouth, because the thought of fighting time or distance or himself for another second makes him sick. Danny produces warning noises and tries to mumble something about dog hair, but Steve pulls back just far enough to point out, “It’s also for me. I missed you.”

Danny frowns, and it looks confused and angry and deliriously happy. “So that’s what I should have been telling you.”

Steve kisses him again, and Danny keeps trying to kiss him back and say words at the same time, and it’s a disaster, and Steve can’t remember the last time he felt so good right where he was.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! ❤ You are lovely, and if you feel like leaving a comment, that would be lovely too.
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
